O4 Corp. gets $15M to expand - Portland Business Journal:

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O4 Corp. — which stands for Out Of OfficedOperations — develops mobile software applicationd that consumer products manufacturerws such as and use to instrucyt sales reps to check inventory products displays and pricing information in retail stores. The technologu also wirelessly transmits data and product ordersd backto headquarters. While consumer goodss manufacturers spend significantlyon in-store marketing promotions and new product “they really don’t get visibility into what’s happeningb at the retail shelf,” said Laura Witt, generalk partner at , a Baltimore-based venture firm that investefd the $15 million.
O4’s software empowers manufacturers’ eyes and ears in retai l stores — their saless force, Witt said. “It makes them much more effectivrand efficient,” she said. O4’s technology, designed to run on hand-held is highly flexible, said Dale Hagemeyer, consumer goods technologg analystat “Think of it as a 12-way adjustablew seat,” Hagemeyer said. “It really contours to how people dothei work.” O4’s globe-trotting chief, Desmond Miller, has an ambitious growtg trajectory for his firm.
O4’s subscribefr base is projected to explode fromabout 25,000 todahy to about 250,000 users in the next thre years, Miller said, from Australia. “We are showing a tremendouz ROI (return on investment) to the market righg now in verydifficult times,” said Miller, who lives in Australiza and splits his time between North America, Asia and “We are able to show payback for thes systems in months and not years, and we are givin g our customers an edge in the marketplace.” O4 expectws to hit its growth targets by adding new customerd and selling more services and products to existing “It’s not just beinh an inch deep with the O4 U.S.
President Harris Fogel “It’s [about] being a mile wide and a mile ABS Capital was impressedwith O4’s and its blue-chip client roster. “Itg was clear to us that they must be offeringt something of value for the consumerproducts industry,” Witt said. ABS, whicu invests in later-stage growth companiez in the business health-care, media and communications, and software sectors, was a majotr investor in , which raisedx $112 million in an initial public offeringhin mid-April.
O4 will invesgt the $15 million — the company’s firstt institutional round — into developing an around-the-clock, global customefr support infrastructure, transitioning from a software-licensinf to a software-as-a-subscription model and executinvg a geographic and product The companysees “huge opportunities” in the emerging markete of Latin America, Eastern Europe and China, where consumer products companies have armiee of mobile workers that can benefit from O4’sw software. “A consumer products multinationakl mighthave 10,000 mobile workers in China Fogel said. “We are about users.
” The globakl strategy is critical as O4 keep s pace with itsmultinational customers, who are themselves chasing overseas demand. “The customer is goinhg where there are more mouths to feed and more feetto Gartner’s Hagemeyer said. “If P&fG is going into Asia and LatinAmericza ... you want to follow P&G wherever P&G wantsd to go.”